Stacking Stones​A Creative Craft Blog

From the mind of Jason Kapcala comes an eclectic journal dedicated to the study of creative writing, rock music, tailgating, and other miscellany. The musings, meditations, contemplations, and ruminations expressed here are my own unless otherwise indicated. Please feel free to share your comments, thoughts, and opinions, but do so respectfully and intelligently.

There is a kind of indulgence that especially adheres to the victim experience. ―Oda Makoto

For younger readers, the movie Beetlejuice might be something of a dead reference, but I want to make mention of it anyway because it has one of my favorite scenes in all of film. (No, not the scene with the dancing shrimp cocktails, though that's kind of great, too.) The scene I am thinking of involves the character of Lydia Deetz (played by a young Winona Ryder) as she pens her would-be suicide note.

"I am alone," Lydia writes, quickly scratching it out to amend the sentiment: "I am utterly alone. By the time you read this I will be gone. Having jumped off the Winter River Bridge."

But, of course, this is not dramatic enough either. So "jumped" becomes "plummeted" and so forth. You get the idea.

Few scenes capture teenage angst so honestly (or so humorously). And yet, I sometimes read work by beginning writers that doesn't read all that differently from poor Lydia's suicide note.

The term Vic-Lit (short for Victim Literature) comes from Kim Addonizio's book Ordinary Genius, where Addonizio cautions us against reveling in our own misery:

"Artists seem especially prone to believing that their pain makes them more interesting or more creative. Here’s what I think: Art is a creative response to life. Pain and suffering are a part of life, but they aren’t all of it . . . . Since so much poetry seems to arise from pain, it’s good to remember that everyone suffers. If you write only to display your pain, and believe it confers some special status, you’re writing Vic Lit—Victim Literature. We all identify with our pain, often believing we are that person, the one who was hurt. You can spend your life stuck in past pain, reinforcing your sense of yourself as a victim."

Though Addonizio is writing specifically about poetry here, her lesson is especially useful for those writers working in Creative Nonfiction, and I have adapted her lessons for our discussions of prose (below), but before we get to that, an anecdote:

I've known writers like the ones Addonizio describes--the Why me, God? crowd. Typically, these writers are talented but self-obsessed, and the work they produce isn't especially compelling. It feels manipulative, disingenuous. One example comes from a few years back, when I was asked to moderate a panel at a well-attended colloquium hosted by a major university. The title of this particular panel was "The Dead Parent's Society: Grief Writing Across Genres," and the writers presenting all identified themselves as "Grief Writers"--each had lost a parent and had chosen to write about that experience either in fiction, poetry, or nonfiction.

So far, not a terribly distasteful undertaking. (Sure, the title of their panel was tacky, but some writers just stink at titles, right?) The idea, to form a panel that looks practically at how we approach difficult subject matter in our writing, was appealing to me, specifically, because personal tragedy is the subject matter for so much of today's writing.

The panel, however, was more like a creative reading, followed by a Q & A session, and though I wanted to enjoy their various eulogies, I ended up leaving that colloquium feeling as though my skin were coated with a slimy film. To be entirely fair, one of the writers had written beautifully about her father's suicide--her poems were artful and heartbreaking, and they did not ring with the echos of "woe is me." But the other two readers seemed determined to market their grief, to exploit it for what they presumably saw as potential literary gains. (I suspect, too, in speaking to these two before and after their reading, that this was their modus operandi for life beyond writing, as well. They seemed to bathe in the buttery attention their loss garnered--the sad looks, the soft cooing noises. Their grief was a subject they could work into any conversation.)

In general, this reading while high on emotion and self-pity, lacked self-awareness and a dedication to the craft of writing--it was more about the readers than the work they had created. And, when during the Q & A that followed, I opened by asking them to define "Grief Writer" (for example, how is a "Grief Writer" different/distinct from someone who simply writes about sad or melancholy subjects?), the poet was the only one who seemed to understand the question. Her sheepish response seemed to suggest that this was just an easy way to theme the panel presentation and that she didn't otherwise consider herself a "Grief Writer."

It strikes me that this experience is not at all unusual. After all, we see quite often in the writing of beginners (as we do in the behavior of teenagers) a tendency to seek out, even celebrate, painful experiences as a way of gaining attention. (As my story illustrates, we also sometimes see it in the work of experienced writers who just never grew up.) The grief writer (or the writer working in Vic-Lit) discards art and introspection, all of the thoughtfulness and the emotional honesty that their subject matter might provide, and, instead, chooses to treat a subject like, say, the death of the parent, with the same self-involved and tactless touch that characterizes most people's high school experiences. It's all about me, the writer.

Now, I'm not suggesting that we should avoid writing about painful subjects (though, despite what best-seller lists and reality TV tell us, there are other things to write about), and I am not saying that writing cannot be a therapeutic approach to dealing with pain (though I do believe that writing and therapy are two different exercises with two different goals). What I am suggesting is that many writers overvalue pain and suffering, substituting pathos for craft. As Stanley Elkins points out in the following quote (taken from The Paris Review, 1976), writing about Grief (with a capital "G") or grief for grief's sake, makes for uninteresting art:

“Yes, well, we all die, yes? We suffer, correct? The score keeps changing, is it not so? And Mommy holds us on the teeter-totter before we can sit upright on chairs. I don’t really care so much about the fact that the world is winless. It is simply a condition that seems true to me. It is just a condition the way a red light is a condition at a traffic crossing . . . .”

So, the question for those among us who wish to write about painful experiences might simply be: How?

The following are my thoughts on the subject, specifically as they pertain to writing nonfiction. This list has been culled from a number of places (including Addonizio's poetry guide and an excellent panel presentation I attended a few years ago at the Winter Wheat Writer's Conferencehosted by Mid-American Review).

Don’t manipulate. Clear, evocative description does more to evoke feeling than trying to linguistically force a reader to feel sorry for you. So, if tempted to write, “Why! Why, dear God, why?” consider if you’re manipulating or revealing.

Focus on imagery. In doing so, you take the focus off abstractions like (Love, Despiar, etc.) and put it on something concrete.

Remember that characters, real or imagined, are not marionettes. If it feels like you are pulling the strings, instead of creating a piece with organically constructed conflict, the effect may be more melodramatic and therefore problematic.

Understand the difference between characters, narrators, voices, speakers, etc., that are victims versus characters, narrators, voices, speakers, etc., that are gritty. Gritty means having firmness of character or courage or being full of determination or pluck. Readers tend to accept characters in the same circumstances as victims that display a sense of grit—outwardly or inwardly.

Avoid stereotype. Victims can be stereotyped, too. Damsel-in-distress, for instance.

Present conflicting emotions. When writing about trauma, a reader expects a certain tone. But what if there was a sense of relief, despite loss, in a trauma? Explore that in detail, unearthing more and more conflicted emotions.

Use hyperbole. By intentionally exaggerating (usually for comic effect) you change the tone of your writing and combat/deflate melodrama.

Think beyond the obvious. This could mean adopting a persona or tilting the point-of-view. Instead of telling a story from your perspective, try speculating on how a friend or loved on perceived your situation. Thinking beyond the obvious can also mean manipulating the time structure in your piece, revealing past and even, if done right, future moments that impact (or will be impacted by) the event. Above all else, aim to be thoughtful and introspective about your experiences.

Choose the right structure. Just as writing in form can control excess emotion in a poem, so can employing a rigid structure undercut the melodrama of your nonfiction. Perhaps the elliptical nature of a lyric essay is best suited to your subject matter. Or maybe you can provide some relief from sentimentalism by threading your story with something less likely to risk indulgence.

Revise until you find the right balance.

Allow for distance. Let time pass before trying to write about painful experiences.

In the case of a lyric essay, one of the most common defining features is "ellipsis." That's basically omission: the absence of certain details or things said. Remember, a lyric essay differs from a narrative essay in that it is generally concerned with evoking a certain feeling (not necessarily telling a complete story).

Sue William Silverman puts it this way: "The lyric essay doesn’t care about figuring out why papa lost the farm, or why mama took to drink. It’s more interested in replicating the feeling of that experience. In this kind of elliptical writing, not all facts are neatly spelled out, understood, or resolved. The reader is required to fill in the blanks as much as possible while, at the same time, accepting that much will remain mysterious. As with poetry, the reader accepts that emotion of the piece itself as the essential ‘fact.’ The accumulation of images forms an emotional whole, if not a traditionally essayistic one.”